Posts filed under 'Ubiquitous computing'
The Mars Desert Research Station project is fascinating in all its enthusiastic, slightly nerdy, and energetic frenzy to find out what it would mean to live on Mars. Now, they have also had a socalled FLAME (family living analysis on Mars) team out in the Utah desert for some research on what it would mean having a family living on Mars. Aside from the expected (primary geological) research, the FLAME team is focused on psycho-social aspects of living together, of coping with frustration and other interesting issues. Perhaps designing for interactions with smart environments on the Mars habitats, creating better potential for peacefull co-habitation in a tincan placed on one of the more unforgiving places in the solar system will come to be a major challenge for human-factors specialists and HCI people sometime during the next decade. I do hope, however, that they will recruit beyond the usual suspects in space exploration: engineers, biologists, and other natural scientists. If people are supposed to live, work, and enjoy themselves in a hermetically closed, high-tech habitat (a wicked problem if there ever was one), input from the “softer” (man, I hate that adjective) sciences will be extremely valuable. Anthropology, sociology, even psychology + a healthy dose of design thinking will be needed if we’re one day supposed to reach the stars!
March 6th, 2008
Bill Buxton gives a brief history of multitouch interaction. I find it interesting to see the amount of reuse taking place, the way, for instance, the 1992 Simon shares a lot of stuff with the iPhone…
January 2nd, 2008
Thursday, I defended my thesis on “Trust Within Technology: Risk, Existential Trust, and Reflective Designs in Human-Computer Interaction”…the doctor is in the house! Find the abstract here...
bliss…
November 4th, 2007
Is it just me, or does the new LabLand appear to anyone else as a thoughtless rework of mid-20th century technological determinism, like in the New York world’s fair theme of 1939 (yes, 1939!) “Come see the WORLD OF TOMORROW” or in the 1940 To New Horizons movie (proudly sponsored by GM - and incredibly corny)? A question to ponder: Will LabLand have movies starring blonde-haired kids going “Whoa, the future sure looks bright Mary, now that we can play in the pool and work on our laptops at the same time…”. If we believe the kind of corporate gadget engineered future - courtesy of Sony, Samsung and whatnot, I also believe that we have lost a crucial critical perspective which means we cannot see how technology shapes and remakes our lives in sometimes unwanted ways - Reminds me of this picture by Jofish. Sorry, could only find it via google image - you’d get the idea!
For the english speakers and readers, here’s a rough translation of the LabLand primer:
LabLand will at all times show the times ahead of us. With constantly updated exhibitions, new themes, new technologies, and new attractions, LabLand will be ahead of the future. In time LabLand will be placed prominently in the international consciousness as a tangible and fascinating view of the human of tomorrow.
…so it goes - just because I recently reread it. Perhaps because “so it goes” is the way we are made to react to the burgeoning of technoligical devices in our lives, and because we should perhaps rather go “what for”…and I’m not a Neo-Luddite!
This is also posted at the InC blog
May 20th, 2006
Again, a post over at Anne Galloway’s place that I don’t know what to do with. This time it is a comment on Mike Kuniavsky’s disambiguation piece. Anne argues that disambiguation (in this case trying to understand ubicomp, pervasive computing, ambient intelligence, everyware etc.) is not a trivial (or innocent) task, but that trying to find “one ring to rule them all” -she asks:
“can any term “accurately capture the essense of an idea as it is perceived by others”? What’s the purpose of that anyway? Why not let it be all messy?
darn, again a question I probably have to incorporate somehow. Intuitively I belive Anne is just about right, but from other perspectives, Mike and Adam have a point too. What to do what to do?
February 4th, 2006
In this interview Adam Greenfield discusses Ubicomp. Look out for his new book, out in February.
January 10th, 2006
